President Obama, First Lady Honored for Leadership to End Veteran Homelessness

The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans has announced that President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama have been selected as recipients of the 2012 Jerald Washington Memorial Founders’ Award, the highest honor bestowed by the nation’s homeless veteran assistance community. President Obama is the first person to receive the award more than once. He was honored in 2009 as the first president in U.S. history to make ending veteran homelessness a priority of his administration. Within months of that event, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki announced the “Five-Year Plan to End Veteran Homelessness,” an ambitious initiative to ensure veterans in crisis will never again be left to fend for themselves on the streets.